Postal Service is closing offices and branches at a rate not seen for at least 15 years, Globe says

Squeezed by the recession and increasing use of the Internet to send documents once sent by mail, the U.S. Postal Service is closing post offices and branches at a rate "substantially steeper ... than at any time in the past 15 years," David Abel reports for The Boston Globe from Windsor, Mass., which lost its post office this year.

"For 113 years, the post office in Windsor brought people together in the small town in the Berkshires, providing a place to chitchat, do business, and send their precious parcels where they needed to go," Abel writes. "But this fall, to the dismay of many of the town’s 900 residents, the U.S. Postal Service closed its local branch, located most recently inside a general store." (Globe photo by Nancy Palmeri)

"This year there are 742 fewer post offices across the country than last year, more than three times the number of offices that were closed last year," Abel reports. (Read more) It's unclear whether his numbers include those where the USPS says it has only suspended service, a strategy it appears to be using to avoid the procedures required to close an office, we reported in February.